Making progress?

Hello, this week we are starting with some small changes in the design of Wally.

We are enlarging Wally120 to Wally340, this means the machine will be using 340 needles (170 on each side) instead of 120 (60 on each side). Which means Wally will grow a little bit. While enlarging Wally we will also try to solve as many problems that we found so far. The needle beds that are used in Wally120 are 100×788 mm. Because we will use 170 needles on each side Wally340’s size needs to be 100x1738mm. We have lengthened the splits where the needles fit in with 10 millimeters for better movement of the needles. In the image below the design of the new needlebeds in SolidWorks is shown.

Problem 1
Everything that comes in contact with the wool when Wally is running has to be as smooth as possible to minimize tension and vibration. We dont want any vibration because it causes Wally to make mistakes (gaps) in the knitwork. And nobody wants socks with holes in them. The parts that come in contact with Wally are now 3D printed, this doesn’t result in very smooth parts, so we will print the parts with a different 3D printer.. the photoprinter!

Problem2 The frame that was created for Wally340 to stand on its own is not solid enough. Currently the connecting parts between the frame construction are 3D printed, which also creates too much vibration when Wally is knitting. So we will design the frame without these 3D printed parts. The construction will be created by alluminium x-profiles like in the images below on the left. The frame will be stable enough like this on its own. In the right image below you can see our new design for the standing frame.

Problem3 The teeth that are used now are too tall, too thin and not strong enough. Which causes it to break more easily ( see image 1 below). We will design the teeth shorter so they won’t touch the needles when the machine is working(see image 2 below). And we will design them more solid to prevent them to break when the tight wool moves along them (see image 3). We will also print them with the Photoprinter so we can make sure it minimalizes the resistance between wool and the teeth when the machine is running. The 3D printed bear heads will also be designed a little bigger and printed with the photoprinter which we already explained in the previous weblog post.

Next week we will buy all the material to build up the big Wally 340, and do some tests. Stay tuned …